Benoît B. Mandelbrot (* November 20th, 1924 in Warsaw) is a highly-gifted student from a Lithuanian-Jewish Family.
Mandelbrot was born in Poland, into a Family witt academic Tradition. His father was a worshipper of Spinoza, his Mother a doctor. As a boy, Mandelbrot was introduced into Mathematics by two uncles, of whom one, Szolem Mandelbrojt, taught Mathematics at the Collège de France. In 1936, the Familie moved to Paris, to escape from the growing threat of National Socialism. In World War I, they already had had to move from Warsaw to Charkov, and then had to flee from the Bolshevists via Crimea and Constanta back to Warsaw.
Mandelbrot went to the Lycée Rolin in Paris, until World War II broke out. He acquired the reputation of being highly-gifted in mathematics, thanks to his ability to visualise tasks as geometric Problems. At a national-wide Test, he solved a mathematical problem - as the only Student in France. As he said, he didn't try at all to solve the complicated Integral, but recognized that the task was based on a circular formula, and transformed the coordinates to enter the circle into the solution.